In Ashley v. Ryan, 153 U.S. 436 (1894), this was the question: The property of various railroad corporations operating in the States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri had been sold under decrees of foreclosure. The purchasers of the respective lines availed themselves of the Ohio statutes, and consolidated all the corporations into one so as to form a single system, the Wabash. On presenting the articles of consolidation to the Secretary of State of Ohio, that officer demanded a fee imposed by the Ohio statutes, predicated upon the sum total of the capital stock of the consolidated company. This was refused on the ground that the State of Ohio had no right to make the charge, and that its doing so was repugnant to the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States and to the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court decided against this contention. It held that, as the right to consolidate could alone arise from the Ohio law, the corporation could not avail of that law and avoid the condition which the law imposed. Speaking of the consolidation, the court said (p. 440): "The rights thus sought could only be acquired by the grant of the State of Ohio, and depended for their existence upon the provisions of its laws. Without that State's consent they could not have been procured." And, after a copious review of the authorities concerning the power of the State over the consolidation, the case was summed up by the court in the following passage (p. 446): "Considering, as we do, that the payment of the charge was a condition imposed by the State of Ohio upon the taking of corporate being or the exercise of corporate franchises, the right to which depended solely on the will of that State," (italics mine,) "and hence that liability for the charge was entirely optional, we conclude that the exaction constituted no tax upon interstate commerce, or the right to carry on the same, or the instruments thereof, and that its enforcement involved no attempt on the part of the State to extend its taxing power beyond its territorial limits."